CHAP. XIV.] 



THE rOUETH DAT. 



251 



This fish is of a fine cast and handsome shape, with small 

 scales, which are placed after a most exact and curious 

 manner, and, as I told you, may be rather said not to be ill, 

 than to be good meat. The chub and he have, I think, both 

 lost part of their credit by ill cookery, they being reputed 

 the worst or coarsest of fresh-water fish. But the barbel 



The Barbel. 



affords an angler choice sport, being a lusty and a cunning 

 fish ; so lusty and cunning as to endanger the breaking 

 of the angler's line, by running his head forcibly towards 

 any covert, or hole, or bank; and then striking at 

 the line, to break it off with his tail, as is observed by 

 Plutarch, in his book "De Industria Animalium;" and 

 also so cunning to nibble and suck off your worm close 

 to the hook, and yet avoid the letting the hook come into 

 his mouth. 



most powerful emetic and cathartic. And, notwithstanding what is said of 

 the wholesomeness of the flesh, with some constitutions it produces the same 

 effects as the spaicn. About the month of September, in the year 1754, a 

 servant of mine, who had eaten part of a barbel though, as I had cautioned 

 him, he abstained from the spawn was seized with such a violent purging 

 and vomiting, as had like to have cost him his life. H. The spawn of 

 most fish, particularly sea fish, is found to become poisonous at times ; but 

 the cause has never been discovered. RENNIE, Ephemera, however, 

 doubts the noxious properties of either the roe or the flesh of the barbel, 

 when in season, which is from July to October, inclusive ; and quotes 

 Bloch, who says that he and his family had eaten the roe without incon- 

 venience. ED. 



